VoIP and ENUM

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

EU Roaming Regulation Published

The European Commiission published the draft of the new Roaming Regulation to bring down the high roaming charges within Europe. All regulators and mobile operators started already calculating.

What will the regulation mean for consumers?

Prices paid for international roaming when travelling within the European Union will not be unjustifiably higher than the charges for calls paid within the user’s country.

Consumers will benefit from lower prices for making calls in the visited country, back home or to any other EU Member State.

Consumers will make considerable savings when receiving calls.

Prices operators charge each other (wholesale charges) will be considerably lower than what they are today. This ensures all operators will be in a position to offer lower retail tariffs.

Transparencyof roaming charges for consumers will be enhanced. Mobile operators will be required to provide customers with full information on applicable roaming charges when subscriptions are taken out and to update consumers regularly about these charges. Consumers can ask for information on roaming charges free of charge either via SMS or voice call.

National regulators will also be tasked to monitor closely the development of roaming charges for SMS and multi-media message services (MMS).